Capa 2 has been a great success story of Blockchain. They have reduced congestion in the Ethereum Mainnet, reducing gas rates while preserving safety.
But maybe they have become too successful, drawing the activity in the chain and the income from rates of the parents who generated them? At least that is what some suggest lately, more recently at the Cornell Tech blockchain conference at the end of April.
In fact, some think that Ethereum should be a bit more greed, or at least fight harder for a larger part of the income cake, particularly sequencing rates.
“People at the Ethereum Foundation [the nonprofit that supports the Ethereum ecosystem] I will tell you that, “yes, we have made ourselves through a ivory tower.” I have heard it several times, ”said David Hoffman, owner of Bankless, during a discussion panel at the Cornell Tech event in New York City on April 25.
In other places, Hoffman has urged Ethereum to make a “strategic pivot”, noting that the cryptographic environment has changed in recent years. Ethereum no longer has the “luxury of being a peace -time research project … exploited by its competition.”
The L2 are reaping millions of dollars in transaction order rates (sometimes called sequencing rates), but none of these income is transmitted to Ethereum, according to James Beck, head of growth in Ens Labs and another speaker at the New York City Conference. Beck told Coinlegraph:
So, this cultural layer of podcasters and researchers says: ‘Well, the price of ETH has decreased compared to these other chips. What do we do to make Ethereum more powerful?
In summary, Ethereum is a neutral verification layer, but Ethereum Mainnet does not compensate quite a lot for the work he is doing. The L2 for profit centralized as a base, optimism and arbitrum are gathering the lucrative sequencing rates while enjoying the safety and life guarantees of the Ethereum mainnet at a relatively small economic cost.
L2S shot after the dencun update
Rollups L2 are a recent innovation; They only emerged in 2023. The idea was to reduce the congestion of the chain and gas rates by moving transaction processing from the main block chain (layer 1) to separate the chains that are at the top of Mainnet (L2S). But transaction processing is possibly the most profitable part of the income game, especially when users choose to pay priority rates to process their orders faster.
The exchange of rates was rarely a big problem before Ethereum’s Dencun update in March 2024, which introduced Blob transactions to help climb the 2s layer. The Blobs significantly reduced the cost for the L2S to publish data in Ethereum, which allowed them to operate more profitably, said Coinmetrics Tanay Ved researchers analyst Ved to Cointelegraph this week.
Since then, the demand for L2 users has shot, especially at the base, the L2 launched by Coinbase in August 2023 in Ethereum Mainnet.
As Ved pointed out in a blog on April 8, Base has earned a total of ~ $ 98 million in revenues of the user’s transaction rates (including base and priority rates), “while paying only ~ $ 4.9 million to the Ethereum base layer, which results in an estimated total gain of $ 94 million from the Dencun update.”
Ved added:
This dynamic has led to many issues of whether layers 2 are positive for Ethereum, or if they are ‘extractive.
Base response
When asked about the rates, a base spokesman told Cointelegraph: “Today, the base already pays Ethereum rates for each transaction at the base. All transactions are resolved in Ethereum, and so far, the base has paid Ethereum more than $ 20 million in liquidation rates from the start of the base.” One can see these rates in the tokens terminal “cost of income,” added the spokesman.
“In general, the base makes it more accessible to obtain fast and cheap transactions and help grow the Ethereum ecosystem by incorporating more users, builders, applications and assets, all of which are transacting ETH and the demand for driving,” said the spokesman.
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However, in many, if not most months, the general rates of the base are approximately 10 times the amount paid to Ethereum by settlement Shops, according to the reference base financial statement. In April, for example, the most recent full month, the base harvested $ 3.7 million in rates, but only $ 305,000 to Ethereum were delivered as liquidation rates, approximately 8% of the total rates.
Even so, perhaps things are not so terrible. Even if the rates are out of place now, the imbalance may not last, others warn. Ethereum’s hard forks as a sin, which were headed yesterday (May 7), and Fusaka, scheduled by the end of 2025, will increase BLOB’s performance. “This means that L2S can publish more Blobs, potentially driving total Blob rates higher than Mainnet,” Ved told Cointelegraph.
Ethereum is already constantly reaching the current BLOB target of three per block, as the table shows below. “Pectra will raise this to six Blobs per block, with a maximum of nine, creating space for a greater capture of rates as the L2 activity scales,” Ved added.
Are the “Rollups based” the answer?
Some Ethereum researchers, podcasters, and even L2, have relied on “curled up” as a more permanent way to solve the problem of the rate and provide better treatment in treatment. Here, the transaction request (that is, the sequence) would be made in the Nenet, not in L2S.
The sequencers used by optimism, referee one, the base and others are more likely to attack or fail, since they are centralized, with a single failure point, some researchers say. Polygon Jarrod Ward writes:
If a centralized sequencer falls, filming effectively leaves its job completely. Stop managing user transactions in L2 and also stop sending data to Ethereum.
“The sequencers of layer 2 have focused dangerously,” added Tom Ngo, executive leader of Metis, a layer 2 block chain of Ethereum.
Ethereum Blockchain Linea took the trick of June 2.6 million lasting the importance of decentralization and the dangers of centralized sequencers.
Related: ‘Vitalik: a story of Ethereum’ is less cryptography and more of human being
Several L2s Based-Rollup have been released last year. Taiko Alethia, the first and largest, was launched in May 2024. A year later, he had $ 148.3 million in total insured value, occupying the 14th place in the L2beat L2S list, although far behind the $ 12.06 billion of the leadership base.
Speedwise, Taiko was averaging a respectable user operations of 20.3 per second (UPS) on May 7, far from the 86.3 UOPS of the base, but at the same time with the arbitration of one (21.6 UOP) and significantly better than optimism (10.3 UOP).
An L2S tax?
Another floated idea in the Ethereum community is to impose a kind of tax on L2. But doing this could have some involuntary consequences, according to Ved. It could make L2S less competitive. It also runs the risk of “activity leaks to competition layer 1 outside the Ethereum ecosystem”. The activity that flows to the base today could flow in its place to Solana or other L1s, said Ved.
There could also be philosophical problems in Ethereum to sit a surcharge in its L2. Ved noticed:
A tax could be seen as contrary to Ethereum decentralization ethos, which would opt for market -driven forces instead of enforcing a tax.
In general terms, the Ethereum Foundation seems to be prioritizing long -term growth over short -term income, Ved explained. However, proposals such as EIP-7762, which increases the minimum BLOB base rate to accelerate price discovery during demand increase, could generate more tariff income to Ethereum mainnet, having an effect as a tax.
Social pressure?
According to Ens Labs Beck, it can take some social pressure so that centralized leaders voluntarily give their sequencing rates. It is possible that others L2 as a line have to intervene and tell L2s centralized something similar to: “Look, you have these risks inherent to a more centralized design, and this is the opportunity to bake [the order processing] in Ethereum, which is more decentralized. “
In this sense, ASS participated in a three -day workshop in the United Kingdom in January with leading researchers and developers of entities such as Linea, Status, Openzeppelin, Titan, Spire Labs and Ethereum Foundation. The immediate task was how to create a scalable and decentralized infrastructure for Namechain of Ens Labs, but also gather several Ethereum Ecosystem teams to collaboratively solve the interoperability challenges L2 with the cuddled based.
It is not always easy to do things in a flat (non -hierarchical) and multiple entity as Ethereum, Beck acknowledges. “Ethereum is a decentralized ecosystem. You can’t take everyone to the same page at once.” But a collaboration like the recent one that took place in the United Kingdom is a beginning.
The Panelist of the Cornell Tech Conference, Hoffman, expressed some confidence that Ethereum could pivot and “turn layer 1 into a rollup” with processing speeds comparable to today’s L2S.
As noted, Hoffman has criticized the Ethereum Foundation for being too insular and academic, but sees signs that things can be changing now, writing recently:
The appointment of the co-executive directors Tomasz Stańczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang marks a new era of responsibility, direction and internal cohesion.
“I feel optimistic,” Beck added. “Ethereum still has most of the assets blocked to define; the largest amount of stable in Ethereum. Blackrock has a background that is being decided to Ethereum.”
In other words, Ethereum is still well positioned to provide the infrastructure for the “network of networks”, that is, the interacting network of private blockchains and public mass that many expect will be the future of technology.
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